Our father has Alzheimer’s disease. It’s been creeping up on him for the last ten years like a slowly rising tide. Finally my mother realized that she had to put him in residential care.
The first place that took Dad was a hospital that accepted dementia patients. Despite that custom, it seemed they never knew what to do with him. Every week there was a complaint about his behaviour. He lost weight so rapidly that the social worker there suspected they were forgetting to take him to the dining room to eat. Within two months he had pneumonia and was obviously deeply disoriented and unhappy.
Fortunately, a bed became available at the Lodge at Broadmead, a veterans’ residence in Victoria. The contrast was immediately apparent. While both locations had small rooms, and hospital beds, and private gardens, and activities for residents, the atmosphere at Broadmead was cheerful and homey. The staff had obviously been hired for their skill, compassion, and patience, and were thoroughly trained in handling Alzheimer’s patients. From the beginning, I noticed that the culture was one of kindness, not bureaucracy or efficiency.
What I found particularly wonderful were the events that broke the monotony of the residents’ lives. While there are a number of activities throughout the day, once a week each unit in Broadmead gets a visit from Ania, the art therapist. Ania brings everyone who’s able, or willing, up to the large, bright art room and gets them going on their projects. The crafts they make are sold in the gift shop, which defrays the cost of supplies.
Dad had been a truly talented amateur artist, taking up pastels in his retirement with the same attention to order and detail he’d brought to his lifelong career in the military. Once Alzheimer’s stole his capabilities, I tried to get him interested in his pastels, but he didn’t remember them and resisted my invitations to try them out.
It was Ania who got him painting again. Not only on his designated day, but every morning.
And slowly Dad transformed. Now, at eighty-nine, he’s no longer restless and grumpy or visibly frightened. He seems quietly content. And while his mind doesn’t remember, I believe his body knows that he’s both well treated and well loved.
On one of my visits I saw Dad in the art room, concentrating on a length of silk. It was stretched over a board on which there were three evenly spaced knobs. The silk was tied tightly over the knobs.
“Ahhh,” I said to myself, “Dad’s going to do tie-dye. How very much like him to do something with military precision.”
I thought no more of it until, during one of my daily phone chats with my mother, she said, “Your father painted a scarf. They entered it in the Saanich Fair, and it won first prize.”
So I wept. I wept knowing that he wouldn’t remember painting it—even if he saw it. And that he wouldn’t remember winning—no matter how many times he was told. I wept with deep gratitude for this wonderful place and the people who understand about love, and fun, and capability, and dignity long past remembering.
My mother bought the scarf from the gift shop and gave it to me for my birthday. I wore it the last time I visited Dad.
He admired it.
Calgary, Alberta